Thursday, August 13, 2009

Stuff.

It's 8:33 and I'm struggling to stay awake. I laughed as I set my alarm for 8:15 tomorrow morning, knowing full well that I"ll be up a good 8 hours before that, but as a wishful thinker, I am setting my sights high.

Of course, I can't go to bed just yet. So, what is a tired girl supposed to do to fill her night for a bit longer?? Iron.

Earlier today, I unpacked my bags, all of them, and quickly and efficiently put everything away. As my closet (truly) filled up, I set aside a pile of wrinkled shirts to be ironed at a later time, which came just a bit ago. But, as you could expect after a summer of shopping, as I set to ironing, I ran quickly out of hangers.

Being a bit OCD, I can't just use any hangers - the ones I need have to be the same light-blue-with-grey-plastic-tip-from-Daiso variety, and although I am fortunately going there tomorrow, it doesn't help me tonight. So what do I decide to do when Ironing fails? Count my clothes.

No, really, I truly sat there and thought (and remember, I am really, really tired), 'Well, this closet looks (amazing and) full, we might as well just count it all up, for just the darn sake of it.' And so I did. I stood in front of my closet (much like a sales clerk inventorying on a clipboard) and tapped the hangers with my pen, creating categories, and writing the results on a pink post-it.

I was shocked (but silently pleased) at the amount of clothing I own. And I think, were I richer or more famous, People magazine would come and take a few shots. But, after getting over my guilty pleasure, it was only 8:30, and unable to go to bed, still, just yet, I set down to find more things to do to kill my time. The result? This blog. I figured, what the heck else do I have to do for the next hour than past my eyes wide open while I type? The subject matter interests me (although maybe not you so much), and the amounts I found are so shockingly ridiculous that they are worth you having a bit of a laugh at.

I no longer wonder where all my money goes. The proof is in the numbers.

The following stats on my closet do not include undergarments, fall/winter clothing, sports clothing (such as t-shirts or running shorts), or casual pajama/housewear. They also do not include my dirty laundry (that is pilling up, and worth a good stat of its own), outdoor-wear, swim suits and swim covers, or the clothes that still need ironed. But they do include the following:

As I sit here, though, I realized that typing it out did not take as much time as I thought (or needed), so for fun (and because it's still not bedtime yet), I went back to my closet and counted only the new items. Then, I subtracted the new from the total, to calculate how many of each thing I had before I left for the summer. Those numbers are in parentheses above.

Evidently, though, having a lot of clothes doesn't solve all problems. You see, I am still not sure what I'll wear tomorrow...

2 comments:

This cracks me up! I've been trying to unpack all my clothes for over a month and already have 4 huge boxes of clothes and 2 huge boxes of shoes to go to Goodwill and 4 more large boxes to unpack. My closets are full, underneath my bed is full of shoes, my dresser is full. I only dream that my closet can be as organized as yours sounds! What to do?! Seriously I need to get started on this tonight and I think you gave me a little oomph:-)

Naturally, I read this blog and started to wonder how many combinations of outfits you could make. There are 179,550 possibilities if you combine your selection of bottoms, tops, and shoes (not including the additional accessories such as a scarf, vest, or belt). But a simple combination doesn't take into account that order matters. So I tried entering the possibilities into a permutations calculator online and you know what what the program gave me as a result??? Infinity! ;)